


Of Witches and Castles

by flugantamuso



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-10
Updated: 2010-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 03:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flugantamuso/pseuds/flugantamuso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wasn't really a woman, and it wasn't really love, and the only crazy person was Edmund, but still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Witches and Castles

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt: Everyone got kind of crazy with me mentioning I was in love with a woman. Angelina Jolie.

She wasn’t even really a woman, but Edmund hadn’t known that. It wouldn’t have mattered; it wasn’t what she was but _who _she was that moved the hearts of men.

Edmund had been lucky to have only encountered her as a boy, when sweets were the greatest thing he knew to wish for. Perhaps, he thought later, that was why Aslan had led them to Narnia as children, because it was only a child that could defeat the power of the White Witch, and not even a child, but a _family. _

When Edmund was a king, and a much older king than when he had first been crowned, it occurred to him to wonder how one woman (no, never that) had held the armies of Calormen at bay. It couldn’t have been the power of the wand, for that was limited to one person, and the Calormene Empire was vast enough to send men by the thousands. It couldn’t even have been the bitter winter that the southerners so disliked, for they had to have known, as all knew, that the winter would die with the witch.

He put the question, as he did so many, to the ever patient Tumnus, royal advisor extraordinaire.

Tumnus thought for a long moment, then said with deliberation, “I don’t know exactly, because it was before my time, but there used to be a story told. It got out of style to tell it, I suppose because it was dangerous to do so.” He paused. “You see, she didn’t like people talking about her.”

Edmund nodded. He’d known that at least.

“But they used to say,” continued Tumnus, “that when the witch first became powerful in Narnia, before she had shown her true colors and turned everything to winter, a Calormene prince visited her at Cair Paravel.”

“Cair Pairavel? The witch was in Cair Paravel? But I thought….” Edmund trailed off. He wasn’t sure what he’d thought. He had wondered, now and then, in an abstract sort of way, why the witch had never destroyed the castle, given that it was part of the prophecy. He had never had time or care enough to finish the thought, but now he thought that he had always had the idea in the back of his mind that Cair Paravel was sacred, protected by the old magic in the same way that the stone table had been protected. The thought that the witch might have used the castle, might have been _able _to use the castle, disconcerted him.

Tumnus gave him a strange look. “Of course she was in Cair Paravel.”

Edmund fixed his attention on Tumnus, more interested now than he had been when he’s begun the conversation.

“Cair Paravel was as great in those days as she is now, and the prince was impressed with her beauty, but he wasn’t intimidated. He, after all, came from a great empire, where castles such as this are common, and he was the heir of it all. This angered the witch, and so she cast a spell on him. He became infatuated with her; he followed her everywhere. The time for him to leave came, and he would not go. His servants urged him to go, and he would not. The witch’s advisors sneered at him, and still he would not go. Finally his royal father sent one of his many brothers to retrieve him.

“All his lofty disdain was gone. All he could think about was the witch; she consumed him. He had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the castle.

“It only got worse from there. By the time the Calormene party had reached the empire, their prince was an unthinking, unfeeling man, staring around him with great, wide eyes that saw nothing.

“The Tisroc swore at the witch, but feared to invade Narnia. His people, his armies, knew what the witch had done to their prince, and they feared her. A fearful army was a useless army, so the Tisroc employed more devious methods. Once a day, every day, for seven and a half years, he sacrificed to Tash, praying for the release of his son from the witch’s spell.

“It worked, in a manner of speaking. After seven and a half years the witch moved out of Cair Paravel, never to return, and the prince died.”

That was the end of it, the answer to the mystery. Only Edmund kept seeing the shimmer of white satin out of the corner of his eyes, hearing the whisper of sleigh-bells, even in mid summer. He thought to himself, rather crossly, that if the castle was to be haunted at all, that it should be haunted by the poor, mad prince. It wasn’t fair that she should have so much power here still, here, where she had never really belonged in the first place. But he couldn’t deny that she _was _here. He saw her in the mirrors, heard her voice on the battlements, felt the brush of a hand against his own in the deserted dungeons.

Eventually he grew so distracted by it that he brought it up with his brother.

“The thing of it is, Ed,” said Peter, who had never taken to his language lessons as well as the girls had, “that you’ve been cooped up in this old castle for too long. You’re starting to see things. It happens to the best of us when we’re restless.”

Edmund wanted to argue that he hadn’t been imagining things, and that he was only restless because he was being haunted, but he _had _been in the castle for far too long. He felt a pang at the thought of leaving her though.

“I know,” said Peter, “why don’t you go to Calormen with Susan? You can scout around a bit and hopefully talk her out of this ridiculous talk of marriage.”

“I thought that she wasn’t going,” said Edmund, remembering with vivid clarity Peter’s reaction to Susan’s declaration of her intention of visiting Rabadash at his father’s court.

Peter made a frustrated noise. “She’s got her heart set on it, and no one short of Aslan himself is going to stop her.”

“I suppose I will go then.”

Peter clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the way of it, Ed! Go do something useful; you’ll be right as rain when you get back.”

For a few nights the cheer of good company and the familiar roll of the _Splendour Hyaline_ were enough to keep him happy and well rested, but he had moments of odd, breathless panic that he couldn’t explain. He did his best to hide it from Susan, but one night, miles from Narnia, he froze up in her arms as they performed a simple dance. She nearly dropped him when she found herself supporting all his weight, but she was too practical to panic herself, and so called the others over to help.

Later, resting in his cabin, he told her all he knew, from the story of the Calmormene prince to his own rapidly worsening condition. When he was finished, he lay there, drained.

Susan was looking at him with a wide-eyed expression. He couldn’t blame her. It _was_ an unbelievable tale. “I know it sounds crazy, but—“

She shushed him with a finger to her lips. “It’s not that, it’s just that—well, I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“About Cair Paravel. Edmund,” she hesitated, “the witch _built _Cair Paravel.”

Edmund stared. It couldn’t be true, it _couldn’t. _“Do you mean to tell me,” his voice was low, but rapidly rising, “that we’ve been living in the witch’s house all these years?”

“Well, where did you think it had come from?” asked Susan in exasperation, “Castles don’t just pop up out of the ground, you know.”

“I thought…” Edmund was bewildered, he wasn’t sure what he’d thought anymore. “I suppose I thought that it was built by the previous kings and queens of Narnia.” He raised challenging eyes to Susan. Narnia _had _had previous kings and queens, of this he was sure.

“Well, yes, but they lived in houses—no, listen to me, Edmund, actual houses. No one until Jadis _wanted _a castle, and so she built it, and lived in it, and showed it off, and when the first snooty prince sniffed at it, she cursed him, or gave _it_ the power to curse him.”

Edmund was too tired to think about it anymore. Only one thing was certain. “I’m not going back to that castle, Susan.”

“Alright, Edmund,” she said soothingly, “we’ll talk about it later, just come with me to Calormen and forget all about it.”

Edmund couldn’t forget it. Every day in the Tisroc’s court his resolve not to return grew stronger, even as the compulsion to do so also grew. He could barely hold his own in conversation with the Tisroc’s visiers and sons, so split was his attention. He saw Rabadash looking at him curiously, and thought with uncommon anger, _this is your problem too, your ancestor suffered from the same thing_.

Eventually, after an adventure that Edmund wished later he could have paid more attention to, they were out, all safely in Archenland, where the burn of being _away, away, away, so far away, _was slightly less.

And then Aslan was there, and Edmund wanted so badly to talk with him as they had talked when he was a boy, but then Aslan was gone, and there were no comforting words to be found. He delayed and delayed going back, and though King Lune was glad to have him, he knew that worried glances were being cast in his direction.

Everything came to a head one morning when Lucy came bursting into the breakfast room, still breathless from her journey. “Come on Edmund, I’ve got to talk to you. Oh, hello your Majesty.”

“Hello to you, Queen Lucy,” replied King Lune. “I’m glad that you’ve come to talk to your brother, and I hope that you’ll come to visit with us (here his arm rose in an expansive sweep to include his sons and Aravis) when you’re done.”

“But of course,” said Lucy, smiling, and then she set her expectant gaze on Edmund.

He followed her out.

“So I expect that Susan has told you,” he began.

“Yes, she has, and I do think that you’re being remarkably silly, Edmund.”

Edmund gaped. He had expected that Lucy, of all the others, would most understand. “But the castle,” he managed to get out, “it’s evil!”

“Oh, Edmund,” said Lucy, her voice sad, “it’s not evil.”

“But it is,” he insisted, “it killed that prince, it’s trying to kill me!”

Lucy was frowning. “I don’t think that it _did _kill the prince,” she said. “I think that Jadis tied the prince to her with the castle. When she left the spell was broken, and the prince died, but there was something left in the castle, an echo. You could be feeling that echo, that memory of what happened so long ago. Or maybe it’s simpler than that, maybe the castle just wants you back.”

“Well, it’s not going to get me.”

“Edmund, if it was going to hurt you then it would have done it years ago. Cair Paravel is where Aslan crowned us, and I don’t believe that he’d put us somewhere that would hurt us. I think that it’s just making itself known to you, because you learned its history, because you’re more sensitive to it than we are, maybe because you woke it up, but I don’t think that that matters. Just give it a chance Edmund. We miss you.”

He didn’t quite believe her, not about the castle, but eventually he did go back, still cautious, and he saw white satin in the mirrors, and heard whispering on the battlements, and felt soft hands brushing his in the dungeons, and he learned not to be afraid, not of her. She wasn’t really a woman, but then, she wasn’t really a castle, either.

finis


End file.
